Operation Kita
Operation Kita was conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Pacific War in February 1945. Its purpose was to return two Ise-class hybrid battleship-aircraft carriers and four escort ships to Japan from Singapore. The movement of the Japanese force was detected by the Allies, but all attempts to attack it with submarines and aircraft failed. The Completion Force reached its destination of Kure in Japan on 20 February without having suffered any casualties. All the ships of the Com completion Force were sunk before the end of the war.
About Operation Kita in brief
Operation Kita was conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Pacific War in February 1945. Its purpose was to return two Ise-class hybrid battleship-aircraft carriers and four escort ships to Japan from Singapore. The movement of the Japanese force was detected by the Allies, but all attempts to attack it with submarines and aircraft failed. The Completion Force reached its destination of Kure in Japan on 20 February without having suffered any casualties. Despite this success, the Japanese Government was forced to discontinue its efforts to ship oil from Southeast Asia to Japan in March due to the heavy losses Allied submarines were inflicting on oil tankers. All the ships of the Com completion Force were sunk in or near Japanese home waters before the end of the war. The Allies learned from intelligence gained by decrypting Japanese radio signals that the ships had sailed. The goal of this operation was the return of some of the IJN warships in the Southwest Pacific to Japan loaded with important supplies. The ships selected to accompany the ships were the light cruiser Ōyodo and destroyers Asashimo and Kasushimo. The battleship Kasushimo and the cruiser Hatsushimo were the cargoes of the Carrier Division 4 and its escorts, respectively. Ise and Hyūga were deployed to Cam Ranh Bay in Indochina during December and returned to Singapore on 11 January 1945. The U.S. Third Fleet raided the South China Sea between 10 and 20 of January but did not locate the Japanese fleet, nor did they intercept Ise or Hyuzga.
During their voyage from Japan, each of the Battleship-carriers was loaded with about 1,000 short tons of munitions for the units defending Manila in the Philippines. Due to heavy Allied air attacks on Manila, the two warships unloaded their supplies in the Spratly Islands from 14 November. They sailed for Lingga Roads near Singapore on the 20th of the month and arrived there two days later. In early February 1945, Ise received orders to sail to what was what was called Operation Kita and departed the Lingga Roads on 6 February. It was the first time the Japanese Navy had attempted to sail in this way since the start of World War II. By this stage the war, the oil reserves in Japan had been largely depleted. The Japanese Government assessed that all convoy routes from the south would eventually be cut, and attempted to supplement the supplies of oil brought in by tankers by loading drums of oil on freighters. This formed part of an effort to run increased quantities of supplies through the Allied blockade of Japan before the country was cut off from its empire. During 1944, Allied submarine attacks effectively cut off the supply of oil to Japan and greatly reduced Japanese imports of other commodities. The two battleship carriers were deployed as Carrier Division 4 and under the command of Rear Admiral Matsuda Chiaki. This deployment was made to both reinforce the remaining elements of theIJN in the area and place the ships near a source of fuel.
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This page is based on the article Operation Kita published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
